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As has been said, climate and location will help dictate value. In some areas, lawns are seen as high maintenance and needing lots of water with a well to ensure the grass stays green. Then, a different landscape with rocks or mulch around trees, bushes, etc. would be preferred. Either way, if it looks nice and well done, is should not go against the sale price.

^^^
Same thing around here, after years of droughts and the realization that we are effectively a desert, most front lawns around here have smartly been replaced with much more interesting designed gardens with a great mix of native and climate appropriate plants and attractive rock and gravel applications. We are one of the few holdouts with our front lawn along with flower and shrub beds but it’s only about 100 s.f. of turf so it’s not really requiring that much water or maintenance.

I would say it’s actually much more common to consider a lawn, especially one that is not maintained or watered enough to be the ugly duckling among the much more attractive and water wise designed gardens here.

professionally landscaped with a variety of plants, flowers, shrubs, etc. It would be a beautiful botanic oasis.

A beautiful botanic oasis will be lovely, and passers-by will pause to admire it. But should it start to lean more towards wild, weedy, scruffy, overgrown (which sometimes happens when the initial gardening enthusiasm wanes), the neighbors with the lush emerald leaf-free lawns will talk with each other about you. A lot.

I’ve had two neighbors switch from lawns to zeriscape. I love the look and the fact it reduces pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers flowing into the Gulf. Both owners had serious medical problems occur though and could not keep up with the maintenance. Their yards went downhill very fast, plants in FL can get out of hand quickly in rainy season. Getting a company to mow a yard is cheap and easy here, finding someone to prune and maintain a xeriscape yard is not.

The one owner sold their home and the new owner removed over half off the plants and severely pruned the rest. The other neighbor has recovered and is out in the garden again, but not before it became so terribly overgrown a professional was brought in to cut it back and clean it up; it had become an overgrown mess.

If xeriscaping is maintained, it’s gorgeous. I think as a selling point it will appeal to a certain segment of people who are ardent gardeners or first time homeowners that like the look. Others who had been a homeowner and maintained a yard before will likely realize the huge amount of work it takes or how much it will cost to be taken care of professionally and may opt for a traditional yard.

Xeriscaping is like a pool, you have to know what is considered a positive and a negative for your area and that varies in different regions.

I tore out the grass shrubs and roses in my new house and went to a desert scape. I have very little to do in front yard. The back yard has some grass small tree/bushes but itís mostly palm type stuff.
I pay a guy $100 a month to trim the bushes and mow the lawn.

We have an extensively landscaped front and backyard (half acre lot). it cost us a lot of money and we also pay someone to maintain it. that may be a negative to some but we'll deal with that (as with anything else we've done with the house) down the road. (Though I can say we are not going to replace what we've done with sod). I enjoy a landscaped lot. When I look outside of my window, I love seeing all of the different plants blooming. Sod is the worst. It is a water hog, gets easily diseased too. I have a small area to the side that the kids can use, and it's sizable enough for them to play and run around.

Iíve had two neighbors switch from lawns to zeriscape. I love the look and the fact it reduces pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers flowing into the Gulf. Both owners had serious medical problems occur though and could not keep up with the maintenance. Their yards went downhill very fast, plants in FL can get out of hand quickly in rainy season. Getting a company to mow a yard is cheap and easy here, finding someone to prune and maintain a xeriscape yard is not.

The one owner sold their home and the new owner removed over half off the plants and severely pruned the rest. The other neighbor has recovered and is out in the garden again, but not before it became so terribly overgrown a professional was brought in to cut it back and clean it up; it had become an overgrown mess.

If xeriscaping is maintained, itís gorgeous. I think as a selling point it will appeal to a certain segment of people who are ardent gardeners or first time homeowners that like the look. Others who had been a homeowner and maintained a yard before will likely realize the huge amount of work it takes or how much it will cost to be taken care of professionally and may opt for a traditional yard.

Xeriscaping is like a pool, you have to know what is considered a positive and a negative for your area and that varies in different regions.

Xeriscaping in a hot wet place like Florida is nuts and will be a huge ongoing permanent maintenance nightmare. I see a few people trying this in North Texas, a much dryer place than Florida, and it's still a disaster once the first season's worth of weed seeds get in place. Furthermore, you can't just mow the weeds down till the grass chokes them out, because you've taken all the grass out and replaced it with littel gravel/rocks/etc. So you get to pull every.single.one. out by hand.

The other thing people don't think about is that all that gravel migrates. It will migrate into your neighbors' yards (depending on the layout) dulling their lawnmower blades and being picked up and flung against things like your (and their) car and house windows. It will migrate into any areas that you choose to keep as grassy.

If you ever decide to do away with the gravel and go back to grass, getting rid of the gravel that's been trodden down into the dirt over several years is a huge frustrating undertaking.

If the gravel is pea gravel size or bigger, it makes it very difficult to dig a hole because the rocks hinder the shovel.

As far as I am concerned, xeriscape should only be considered if you live in a place so dry that weeds will not grow on their own without supplemental water from you.

I absolutely adore those types of yards. I think they are fantastic. And I wish more people would follow their lead. I've seen many beautiful ones on several garden tours that people have done themselves. They are by far my favorite type of yard. I was working on one of my own before my ex husband ruined it all, sigh. But it really helps if you enjoy gardening.

Last edited by mlulu23; 03-26-2018 at 09:37 AM..

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